​When I was immersed in religion, I ignored the holy book problems outlined in the previous chapters. The Bible god killing the first born of an entire nation, telling Jews to stone disobedient children and slaughter unbelievers but keep the young maidens for pleasure, were just glossed over as some sort of moral lesson about obedience to god. Again, I must say, it's amazing what the mind can justify in service to an ideology.

But awakened by the inconsistency of holy book words with the true nature of the Creator, I reflected on how religions act out.

Today, Muslims following the god of the Qu'ran and Hadith can kill women for speaking to a man without permission. That can be done by having her throat cut, drenching her with gasoline and setting her aflame, and stoning or shooting her. If a woman is raped and she doesn't have male witnesses who will testify on her behalf, she may be accused of fornication or adultery and then be either killed or imprisoned.

The Qur'an's god says people who do not accept Islam are to be killed. Converts to Islam who convert to another religion are to be killed. Those who question doctrine are to be killed. The Afghan Taliban used half time during soccer games to butcher fornicators, adulterers, and thieves. The majority of Muslims (by some reports, 70% or more) believe suicide bombings are holy acts that efficiently transport martyrs to paradise where a bounty of virgins awaits men and virile men await women.

The Bible god states that any who worship gods other than Yahweh are to be slaughtered: "Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants . . . with the edge of the sword . . . and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword." (Deut. 13:15,16) "All therein" includes women, children, old folk, and the poor. Any who would not do the killing in the name of the Bible god are also to be put to death.

The Bible god also demands death for numerous other transgressions, such as taking the Lord's name in vain, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath, cursing one's father or mother, adultery, being a non-virgin when married, etc. (Lev. 24:16; Ex. 31:15, 21:17; Lev. 20:10) The suffering and death of humans, such as when the whole world was destroyed by a flood, is said to have created a "sweet savor" for the god of the Bible. (Genesis 8:21)

I was led to believe that such Bible statements are symbolic and allegorical and can be interpreted more gently. However, the Bible presents no real choice since those who "add to or take away from" it (do not follow all of it to a tee) are worthy of death. (Deuteronomy 4:2; 12:32; 13; Proverbs 30:6; Matthew 5:17; Revelation 22:18-19)

The New Testament, today thought to advocate only love and peace, has been interpreted differently through the ages. That's because Jesus is said to have exclaimed that he came to divide and likens heretics to branches to be burned: "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." (John 15:6; Matthew 10:34) Bible verses can be found to lay the groundwork for persecution of nonbelievers. (1Corinthians 1:10-13, 3:3, 11:19, 14:33; Galatians 5:19-21; 2Peter 2:1; Romans 16:17; Philippians 4:2; Jude 19)

Acting out such admonition, the Catholic Church did not withdraw its judgment of deicide (killing Jesus=god) against the Jews until after World War II. This stance justified the killing of millions of Jews up to that time.

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When the Bible was read and followed for what it says, there were horrific results.

King Philip of France consulted Bible clerics and blamed a pestilence in 1348 on blasphemy among the populace. To fix that he made the penalty for one infraction the loss of one lip, the second infraction would result in slicing off the other lip, and with the third infraction, the tongue would be removed.

To make sure the disease disappeared, Philip again consulted Bible experts and then forbade black clothes, showing any grief (which could be interpreted by god as not being happy about the punishment he was visiting on people), working after noon on Saturday, swearing, living in sin, or gambling. (The dice makers quickly turned to rosary making.) Nevertheless, Philip was evidently not hard enough on the folks. Twenty-five thousand died anyway.

The Inquisition was begun in 1184 by Pope Lucius III. In the Albigensian Crusade, ignited by the Inquisition, the battle cry of the papal legate was: "Kill them all, surely the Lord discerns which ones are His." In other words, god would either protect the proper believers or receive them into heaven if they were killed. Truth became whatever could be elicited by a tortured confession, not what the truth naturally was.

The shedding of blood was proscribed by the Bible, but that made any other macabre and sadistic torture fair game. Squasation was a favorite. The accused's hands were tied behind the back, and then the victim was hoisted into the air by the wrists. If that excruciating pain was not enough to elicit a confession, weights could be tied to the feet so that if the victim was released and then jolted to a stop before reaching the ground, the shoulders would be completely disarticulated. Disemboweling innocent people in front of their families could also be done with little bloodletting.

The Holy Inquisitors contracted with fabricators to make devices they could use to crush bones and heads, and stretch mouths and joints to create as much pain as possible—without blood. Death and unconsciousness were the only things that limited pain.

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Anyone could be accused of heresy at any given time, such as denying that god took the stars out of his treasure chest each evening to hang them from the dome of the heavens (Saint Philastrius). To make sure a person was telling the truth, they could then be "put to the question." If under torture the contumacious heretic still denied the charge and refused to repent, and there was any evidence (like the word of an accuser) that they were guilty, they could then be put to death.

If the persecutors could have found a way to torture someone forever, imagining they were emulating the Bible god's eternal hell, they would have gladly cranked the screws or stoked the fire endlessly.

Having gathered the always sure confession, and with a sense of victory for having purged the flock and saved the sinner, the clerics would set the innocent and pathetic victims—no longer able to walk or even close their mouths from the fractures and disarticulations—in a collapsed heap on the street to succumb to disease and starvation.

Even the more reasonable philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, fulminated about heresy and sanctioned burning witches at the stake. He was sainted. What else could Aquinas preach, since the Bible god said, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." (Exodus 22:18; Deuteronomy 18:10-12) The proof of witchcraft was easy. Most everyone who was accused and then tortured admitted to the crime. As for the argument that torture can cause people to confess anything, the holy clerics had a perfectly logical reply: If people were telling the truth, god would give them the strength to not admit to a lie.

The Catholic Church, in partnership with the civil courts, dispatched an estimated fifty thousand to eleven million women (it is impossible to sort myth from fact to get actual historical numbers on this). The old, widowed, ugly, and mentally disturbed were easy victims since they were fitting suspects to match the crime. Burning witches and epileptics (a sure sign of devil possession) was no big deal since that was necessary to save the rest of the population from these mortal demons who shapeshifted into cats, and molded candles out of human fat to make themselves invisible. Besides, witches were going to end up being burned forever anyway, so why not help the Bible god by giving them a head start?

Other participants in this incredible brutality included the protestant, John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian Church, and Martin Luther.

The inquisitors reasoned that it was the evil, the sin they were punishing, not the person. How could one be too cruel to evil, sin, or the devil? Besides, what's a little torture and murder if you are saving a soul for eternity? A torturer didn't even need a thick skin since any cries of pain were just a ruse by victims to elicit sympathy, a mere ploy to free them so they could continue to do the devil's work. The impassible Inquisitors were never fooled. They knew better since all of the devil's minions were immune to pain.

Plants and animals were also held to account. One woman was thought possessed because she didn't make the sign of the cross before eating a head of lettuce. She explained that she did not know the devil was sitting on the lettuce. A priest took care of that by exorcizing the evil spirit off the head of lettuce, thus absolving the woman. Since the Bible says Jesus once put evil spirits in some pigs, then obviously creatures could be home to demons. A rooster was unaccountably found with an egg. He was tried in a solemn court of justice and burnt as a sorcerer. St. Bernard excommunicated a swarm of flies that irreverently interrupted his sermon.

Cats were viewed as agents of the devil and killed with impunity. An unintended consequence was the proliferation of rats carrying the Black Death that killed almost half of Europe's population in the Middle Ages.

Incalculable suffering and death resulted from the impiety of seeking medical relief rather than paying for holy relics and using saints' bones. Illness and disease were thought of as divine providence, and trying to interfere with it would surely make the Bible god even angrier. Surgery was forbidden and believed unnecessary because the savior, not a knife, was the way to cast out demons. There was also the danger of fiddling with a bone residing somewhere in the torso that was the nucleus of the resurrection body. Imagine the disaster if a surgeon removed that by accident or shifted it out of place such that a patient might head off in the wrong direction after death. Anesthetics for childbirth were disallowed because experiencing Eve's curse of the pain of childbirth was a divine duty.

Holy people went their entire lives without bathing because the Bible said the body was vile and to treat it as such helped assure salvation. This squalid filth persisted for centuries.

Missionaries went to the tropics to convert the heathens and save them. They promptly put clothes on the sinful naked bodies of the natives. This shielded the skin from the many healthy effects of sunlight (immune stimulation, anti-cancer, anti-rickets, production of vitamin D in the skin, and more) resulting in millions suffering from disease as a result.

Railroads and telegraphs were pronounced as heralds of the antichrist. Natural gas was opposed because it was the noxious emanation from the bowels of the Earth where evil spirits resided. A petition presented to the American Congress in 1864 condemned the extraction of petroleum from the Earth since the Bible god obviously was storing it there as fuel for the conflagration of Armageddon. Life insurance was seen as an evil attempt to thwart the will of god.

Mennonite, Amish, Jewish and other clannish religious groups, to this day, suffer terribly due to the inbreeding that is encouraged (if not mandated) by their Bible god. The misery this misguided attempt at homogenous purity, racism, and supremacism has visited on families is incalculable with some fifty genetic diseases so far identified.

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​There is a verse in the Bible that says "By their works you will know them." When this is applied to religious institutions and their history, the conclusion that they are human-made is unavoidable.

Of course, most modern religions set aside their past evils. Citing the Bible as authority for their forgiveness, they resume going about their infallibility. However, a thinking person cannot forgive and forget an immoral tradition. Particularly so when the underlying sin and hubris of attributing holy book cruelty and injustice to the Creator persists. Sending children off to holy book classes that celebrate a god who takes joy in killing babies and having parents stone to death children who backtalk, creates an ominous lingering potential for the resurgence of such atrocities should the state ever be out of the way.

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Introduction1. Rules for Finding Truth2. Truth Is Real and Accessible3. Origin Choices4. The Laws of Thermodynamics5. The Law of Information6. The Law of Impossibility7. The Law of Biogenesis8. The Laws of Chemistry9. The Law of Time10. Fossil Problems11. Have Humans Evolved?12. Are We Selected Mutants?13. Favorite Evolutionist Proofs14. Why Evolution Is Believed15. Free Will Proves Creation16. Design17. Biological Machines18. Nuts, Bolts, Gears, and Rotors Prove Intelligent Design19. Humans Defy Evolution20. The Anthropic Universe21. Evolution’s Impact22. Putting Religion on the Table23. How Religion Begins and Develops24. Religions Cross Pollinate25. Gods Writing Books26. Questionable Foundations of Christianity27. How Best to Measure Holy Books28. The Ultimate Holy Book Test29. Religion Unleashed30. End(s) of the World31. Defending Holy Books32. Faith33. The Source of Goodness34. Matter is an Illusion35. Weird Things Disprove Materialism36. Even Weirder Things37. Creature Testimony38. Personal Weirdness39. Proving Weird Things40. Skeptics and Debunkers41. Free Will Proves We Are Other42. Mind Outside Matter43. Death is a Return44. Life After Death45. Why There is Suffering46. The Creator47. Thinking’s Destination$1 Million Reward

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